Tag: climate change

The editorial “Obama misleads cadets on climate change” should have been entitled “Tom Harris misleads on climate change.” It’s his job. Canadian Harris and Australian Bryan Leyland, who co-wrote this editorial, are paid by fossil fuel corporations to deny real climate science (“DeSmog Blog,” one of TIME’s Top Ten Blogs).

President Barack Obama’s approach to climate change is based on an acceptance of the conclusions of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Perhaps the most widely cited of these conclusions are those of the 2013 IPCC report which stated:

Sir Crispin Tickell, a former British diplomat with particular interest in the relationship between the environment, politics and business, will give a lecture at Washington and Lee University on May 5, at 5:30 p.m.in Northen Auditorium in Leyburn Library.

The policy gulf between the development and environmental communities might not at first seem obvious but occasionally our interests travel on different trajectories. The compelling need to provide energy to the estimated 1.2 billion people who do not have access to electricity crashes into the reality of the climate change consequences of providing that energy from coal and fossil fuels.

Demonstrators outside the Virginia Chamber of Commerce’s Energy and Sustainability Conference this morning met conference attendees with signs like “Dominion – Global Warming starts here” and other signs urging the state’s largest utility to quit its membership in ALEC-the American Legislative Executive Council.

While we may not yet have reached the point of no return—when no amount of cutbacks on greenhouse gas emissions will save us from potentially catastrophic global warming—climate scientists warn we may be getting awfully close.

Climate change increasingly dominates the environmental movement. Besides last month’s Earth Hour, an event focussed on “changing climate change,” climate activists will take centre stage at this year’s Earth Day on April 22.

While climate change threatens the public health and economic well-being of everyone, low-income Americans are especially vulnerable to the extreme weather and dramatic increases in electricity costs associated with global warming, according to a new report released Wednesday by Natural Resources Defense Council.

Demonstrators with the Sierra Club picketed outside an event for Senator Frank Wagner on Thursday at Town Center in Virginia Beach to protest the Senator’s opposition to EPA rules to regulate carbon pollution from coal and gas fired electricity power plants.

With climate change already damaging Virginia’s economy, endangering citizens’ health, and threatening coastal cities, a new issue brief shows that if the Old Dominion were to meet its already existing voluntary energy goals, the state would actually beat the carbon emission targets in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan by 20 percent.

A legally binding and universal agreement limiting carbon emissions to keep global warming below two degrees Celsius—has been elusive to date, but environmentalists remain optimistic that 21 could be their lucky number.

The Energy East Pipeline is a $12 billion project proposed by TransCanada Corp. that will combine existing, converted natural gas pipelines with new pipeline construction to carry oil some 2,800 miles across Canada from Alberta’s tar sands fields to export terminals in Quebec and New Brunswick.

On the eve of a Federal Emergency Management Agency meeting in Norfolk on flood risk management, a new report by the Sierra Club warns that sea level rise is accelerating and that greater precautions should be taken in planning for growth along the coast.

Keystone XL pipeline supporters want to facilitate expansion of Canada’s oil sands, a critically important energy resource for North America, by encouraging the expansion of important arteries such as Keystone to bring crude oil to refineries in the United States.

The climate movement has embraced divestment—that is, ditching stocks, bonds or investment funds deemed unethical or morally ambiguous—given how effective the tactic was in helping topple Apartheid in South Africa by shaming the companies still willing to do business there.

Coal combustion plants account for more than half of Americans’ electric power generation. According to Coal’s Assault on Human Health, a report by the non-profit Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), coal combustion releases mercury, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and other substances known to be hazardous to human health.

Global climate change and human conflict are two different problems, dealt with by different groups, right? Wrong. In fact, the United States military combats terrorism and climate change. Both are huge threats to national security.

Why is it that when politicians make basic science mistakes in support of the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused global warming, no government agency or university representative corrects them? It is not as if such errors are rare; they are happening all the time.

A witty sign showing up at climate rallies proclaims: “Save the Earth – It’s the only planet with chocolate!”, and for good reason. The severe weather, extreme temperatures and irregular rainfall associated with global warming is more pronounced in the tropical regions where cocoa is cultivated from West Africa to Indonesia to South and Central America.

Last week NOAA headlined their home page, “It’s official: 2014 was Earth’s warmest year on record.” NASA proclaimed in their January 16th news release video, “2014 was the hottest year on record.” But these announcements are effectively lies.

The climate controversy is one of the world’s most important discussions. At stake are billions of dollars, countless jobs, and, if U.N. representatives who met in Peru are right, the fate of the global environment itself.

It’s hard to believe there are still any climate change deniers. But a recent survey by the non-profit Center for American Progress found that some 58 percent of Republicans in the U.S. Congress still “refuse to accept climate change.”

Rolling Stone alleged a gang rape at UVA and now doubts its own report. I have no knowledge of the matter. Maybe the victim was completely honest. Maybe she was largely honest but too drunk, or just too traumatized, to remember which fraternity house she was in. Maybe she made it all up.

A snowstorm is the ideal time to write about climate disruption, as it allows us to immediately set-aside the cartoonish claim that if any spot on earth isn’t warmer than it was yesterday then all is well. The following things we know:

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Augusta Free Press launched in 2002. The site serves as a portal into life in the Shenandoah Valley and Central Virginia – in a region encompassing Augusta County, Albemarle County and Nelson County and the cities of Charlottesville, Staunton and Waynesboro, at the entrance to the Blue Ridge Parkway, Skyline Drive, Shenandoah National Park and the Appalachian Trail.